WASHINGTON — Keith Van Horn joined the ranks of Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin as Nets who were firmly rooting against making any deals before last night’s trading deadline.

Van Horn remembers how once before the Nets tinkered with their roster. And messed things up.

“Team chemistry has been great this year. It’s always a fragile thing. We made a trade my rookie year [for Rony Seikaly] and it really messed up our chemistry,” Van Horn recalled before the Nets and Wizards squared off here last night. “We had a losing streak and we struggled for a while.

“So I really like what we have here. We have a great group of guys who play very hard, unselfish, play together. I want to see how far this thing can go.”

Van Horn, of course, is a name that gets mentioned in trade rumors. He heard them last summer and some have been floated this season.

Van Horn headed to Utah at the start of the off-season and braced himself. He firmly expected himself or Stephon Marbury to be dealt. He began breathing again when Marbury went to Phoenix for Jason Kidd. It was tough. But not as tough as the time leading up to the trading deadline.

“In the summer it’s not as difficult. You’re able to prepare yourself for it,” Van Horn said, stressing it’s tougher on family men [like himself] over single guys to hear the talk in-season. “During the season, all of a sudden you pick up, especially if you have family and you have children, and you have to look at schools. If you’re single, it’s not that big of a deal. You move out of your apartment.

“It is a difficult thing for people to deal with in this league. At the same time, it’s part of the territory, and when you come into the league, you have to understand that.”

The Nets were not expected to do anything before the deadline. They looked for size, but there wasn’t anything that was available that could make them significantly better. The Nets were atop the Eastern Conference and the prevailing thought was: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Remember, Seikaly was supposed to make them significantly better once, but he arrived with a bum foot and the chemistry decidedly tilted.

Van Horn insists he has grown nearly immune to the rumors and the “what-if” trade talk. One simple reason to ignore it is the matter is out of a player’s hands. Nearly immune. There is always concern. Remember, he’s got his family in New Jersey.

“I don’t let it bother me too much because I don’t really have control over it,” Van Horn said. “I know my children are happy in their school and my family finally has settled down in the area. It’s tough to just pick up and change all that. That would be my biggest concern.

“But I don’t lose any sleep over it.”

Van Horn had more immediate concerns last night, specifically Michael Jordan, who sat out a game in preparation for the Nets, a team that handed him the worst beating of his professional life, a 44-point wipeout in New Jersey Jan. 16.

“He’s going to be fired up. The whole team is going to be fired up. So we’ve got to get ourselves fired up,” Van Horn said.